For the past year, a curious-looking new tower has loomed over the city. To some, the 134-foot angular tower with an American flag on top looks like an avant-garde sculpture. "The other day a real estate person called me, wanting to know if it's a church that's being built here," said Pat Davis, a spokeswoman for Angus Petroleum, which owns the tower. Actually, the intriguing structure at Delaware Street and Rochester Avenue is a soundproofed, camouflaged oil drilling rig.

In the seven years since they moved into their house on 2nd Street, Jim Calvillo and his family have learned to hate their next-door neighbors: three oil wells that are unwelcome companions, day and night. * "We can't even sit out in the back yard, especially during the summertime, because the fumes from the oil produced and solvents used are so strong," said Calvillo, who is also plagued by noise from the wells, which pump 24 hours a day.

The suggestions ranged from burning an oil platform in effigy to starting a citywide fuel-conservation drive. One Laguna Beach woman even suggested forming a "human snake from San Clemente to Huntington Beach" when U.S. Interior Secretary Donald Hodel visits on Aug. 31 to show Orange County's opposition to a plan that would open its coastline to offshore oil drilling.

Officials of Orange County's coastal cities are puzzling over what went wrong last week when a key House subcommittee cleared a compromise agreement with the Interior Department that would open 54 square miles off the county's coastline to oil exploration. Some city council members from coastal communities blame Rep. Robert E.

The future of a controversial compromise plan to open 1,350 square miles off Orange, San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Humboldt counties to oil exploration will be decided in final negotiations between Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel and California congressmen in September, according to Hodel's staff and congressional aides. Meanwhile, officials of Orange County coastal cities have formed a coalition to fight the opening of 54 square miles off their shores to drilling.